This is the latest short story collection from George Saunders, there are 9 short stories that focuses on a diverse group of people, examining human nature, often from offbeat and imaginative angles, and focuses on themes that include poverty, inequality, power, class, exploitation, revenge, love and disappointment. There are astute observations of the state of our world, so many issues that raise worries and questions over which Saunders registers his concerns. He ably captures the ways in which people's minds can work, the way we can interact with each other and act out in the world, which he achieves with his admirable brevity of prose, wit, humour, humanity and satire, whilst venturing into science fiction, technology and fantasy territory, along with more recognisable pictures of individuals and our world as it is. The 9 stories are:

Liberation Day
The Mom of Bold Action
Love Letter
A Thing at Work
Sparrow
Ghoul
Mother’s Day
Elliott Spencer
My House

In a dystopian world, the poor are enslaved with the purpose of entertaining the wealthy, and Custer's last stand is revisited. An unnoticeable couple, invisible to others, find each other and love, devoted, a light in the world to comprise more than the sum of their individual parts. A mother has a awful relationship with her children but is unable to see how she contributes to it. Another mother over-obsesses about her son, this informs the over-reaction that follows. After unprecedented changes in our government, a grandfather writes a letter to his grandson, how he never expected to see pillars in society that he thought would stand come under fire, how he did little to prevent this situation arising, whilst simultaneously telling his grandson to be careful. There are the characters and judgementalism in a office, memories of the vulnerable are scraped, the existence of a nightmare Colorado amusement park, and efforts to buy a house.

I might not have appreciated every story, but I did love most of them, they illustrate the power of short stories beautifully, perceptively reflecting the darkness, fears, injustice, political turbulence, anxiety and bleakness of the world we live in yet still shot through with hope. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

As his first story collection since the excellent Tenth of December in 2013 and the success of his only novel Lincoln in the Bardo, expectations for Liberation Day are almost certainly unachievable. There are great stories here which play with those expectations and how we engage with their characters and their actions in really interesting ways. Saunders' stories come in two main groups: those set in twisted versions of our world or futures (Liberation Day, Ghoul), which he has been giving us since his first collection CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, and those which are more recognisably contemporary (A Thing At Work, Mother's Day), although there are overlaps. For me both groups have their pleasures and there is delight to be had in working out how the strange worlds he throws us into function. There are fairly oblique commentaries on recent and current American politics (Love Letter) and hints of links between some of the stories. You have to do a bit of work to understand them, but the more you put it, the more the stories pay off.

I wasn’t a big fan of Lincoln in the Bardo so I wasn’t sure I would like this but I actually really enjoyed it. I think the authors style suits short stories and his voice shines through in these.

I received an advance review copy of Liberation Day from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm so pleased to have read this collection of short stories from George Saunders, clearly a master of the form. Saunders stories are often dystopian and look at the darker side of humanity. He continues these themes and considers how people justify their unethical behaviour. His use of language is superb, he conveys so much just with his style.

The first and penultimate stories in the collection have slightly similar premises, in that in each story someone has been stripped of their identity and is being exploited by others just in very different ways. Another story has a grandfather advise his grandson in a letter about whether to stand up for a friend or hide, but also the grandfather has to try to justify his lack of action when society was unravelling. There is a contemporary relevance to all the stories. They are fascinating, haunting, brilliantly written and thought provoking.

I think, like a lot of people, Saunders became known to me through his Booker Prize winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo - one of my favourite novels of recent years.

I was not aware that he was best known for his short stories so I was keen to read this. I understand that his writing style is not for everyone but, to me, he represents the very best in literary fiction. Some of these short stories are better than others however as a collection I was very impressed and will definitely be seeking out his previous works.

Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

This is George Saunders first collection of short stories for a decade and follows his Booker shortlisted novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which I described as “flawed but brilliant.”

I would struggle to apply the same praise here. Ultimately these are well crafted tales but, relative to my expectations, I found the collection underwhelming. The blurb hails the author, quoting Time, the “best short-story writer in English” and perhaps in a way that is the issue since, compared to say the three story collections that have won the Republic of Consciousness Prize in recent years these feel very much within the conventions of the form rather than stretching them.

For me, the least successful stories are those where Saunders attempts dystopian fiction, most notably the title story (60pp), Ghoul (31pp) and Elliot Spencer (29pp), all at an awkward length between focused story and fleshed out novella. Each gives us an odd set-up:

• Liberation Day a world where poor people volunteer to have their memories erased, so their families benefit from funds, and serve as an odd in-house entertainment system;

• Ghoul people serving in an underground ghost-train where there never seem to be any Visitors, but pointing this out is a Regrettable Falsehood punishable by being kicked-to-death by the rest of the group;

• Elliot Spencer a world where vulnerable people have their memories erased, in a Scrape, so they can be reprogrammed as political protestors, meaning the protagonist of the story has to relearn Words Worth Knowing in Explain Time (leading to a fractured narrative style).

This clunky use of Capitals to designate these are New Concepts is rather endemic to Saunders’ style in these three stories, this from Liberation Day:

We wonder avidly. Though not aloud. For there may be Penalty. One may be unPinioned before the eyes of the upset others and brought to a rather Penalty Area. (Here at the Untermeyers’, a shed in the yard). In Penalty, one sits in the dark among shovels. One may talk. But cannot Speak. How could one? To enjoy the particular exhilaration of Speaking, one must be Pinioned. To the Speaking Wall.

Liberation Day also replays the details of the Battle of the Greasy Grass (aka Custer's Last Stand) for reasons that passed me by.

If Saunders is attempting to comment on the current trends in the US, he does so rather more successfully (and directly) in Love Letter, which at 10 pages also feels less padded. This is a letter from a man to his grandchild, acknowledging that his own generation failed to act in time to prevent the political trend to authoritarianism, but still advocating caution. This story was featured in the New Yorker in 2020 but feels apposite in the week after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade.

Seen in retrospect, yes: I have regrets. There was a certain critical period. I see that now. During that period, your grandmother and I were working on, every night, a jigsaw puzzle each, at that dining room table I know you know well. We were planning to have the kitchen redone, were in the midst of having the walls out there in the yard rebuilt at great expense, I was experiencing the first intimations of the dental issues I know you have heard so much (perhaps too much) about. Every night, as we sat across from each other, doing those puzzles, from the TV in the next room blared this litany of things that had never before happened, that we could never have imagined happening, that were now happening, and the only response from the TV pundits was a wry, satirical smugness that assumed, as we assumed, that those things could and would soon be undone and that all would return to normal—that some adult or adults would arrive, as they had always arrived in the past, to set things right. It did not seem (and please destroy this letter after you have read it) that someone so clownish could disrupt something so noble and time-tested and seemingly strong, something that had been with us literally every day of our lives. We had taken, in other words, a profound gift for granted. Did not know the gift was a fluke, a chimera, a wonderful accident of consensus and mutual understanding.

The Mom of Bold Action (29pp) was the collection’s highlight for me, a relatively simple domestic tale of a obsessive mother seeking revenge for a minor physical assault on her son, but with a twist in the narrative style. The mother is a children’s book author - her current work is ‘Henry the dutiful ice-cream truck tyre’(!) - and she sees the world through the lens of story ideas.

Mother’s Day (25pp) is perhaps closest to Lincoln in the Bardo: a widow and her husband’s lover see each other across the road, but the reckoning between them is more existential, and in the next world, rather than this.

Sparrow (8pp) and My House (7pp) are both rather sentimental tales, lacking the edge Saunders tries to apply elsewhere.

And A Thing at Work (25pp) is a comic story of how a petty dispute at work elevates, although it didn’t really work for me and for odd takes on mundane office life, Ben Pester’s Am I In The Right Place takes this to a much higher level.

And that ultimately was my issue with this collection. Unlike with his Booker-shortlisted novel it feels other writers, English-speaking and translated, are doing far more interesting things with the form.

2.5 stars rounded to 3.

I came to George Saunders like a lot of his readers, I suspect, through Lincoln in the Bardo which won the Booker Prize in 2017. That book, to date, remains his only novel for Saunders is better known as a short story writer.

This collection, his fifth, might not reach the heights of Tenth of December, his best collection in my opinion to date. At times this collection feels like it is echoing some of that work too, though each piece here really does stand on its own. How much you appreciate these pieces will depend upon how experimental you like your prose to become, how much you can accept to work to go beyond the confines of realism into the hyper. I loved it.

The stories in this work can easily be read more than once, for in each re-reading you will parse something new, find your perspective shifted slightly. Saunders is the master of saying so much with such brevity.

Whilst it is true that not every piece here is as successful as others - I always find this with collections of short stories - the one I liked least might be the one you like most (and might be the one I love most when I re-read it) and that becomes of the joy of a short story collection.

Ultimately what I am saying is if you love Saunders already you will love this, and if you've not read him, this is a good a place as any to begin.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC.